Director’s update

One of the challenges of health research is maintaining continuity of effort through funding cycles. We have been very fortunate at the Prevention Centre to have had five years of funding.

It seemed such a long period when we started just over four years ago. Then the practicalities of getting started intervened – recruiting the best people, building the relationships necessary for our research, and negotiating contracts with universities so people could be paid. The real period shortened and time started to fly as activities multiplied.

So now the time has already arrived when we have to look to the next period. We have been given a chance to apply for another five years of funding.

At one level it’s like starting again, finding like-minded partners willing to contribute funding, and developing a research program that brings together the interests of funding partners with those of the researchers.

At least this time we have more than a vision to sell, with a solid body of research and development outcomes that we can point to, and a great group of academic and system researchers who have collaborated successfully.

I am sure we will find ourselves again in the position of wanting to do more than we can reasonably fund. We don’t have a lot of time, with a proposal due by the end of this month.

Next week the potential funding partners and investigators will meet, and I am excited to see what research priorities will emerge hopefully for the next phase of the Prevention Centre.

Welcome to the Prevention Centre’s blog, which features comment about key issues in the prevention of chronic disease as well as systems thinking for prevention. We welcome your comments on the blog (please read our comments policy here). If you would like to write an article for the blog, please contact the Prevention Centre’s Senior Communications Officer Helen Signy.